THE ENCROACHING SEA ON THE EAST
COAST.
By PERCY CLARK, B.A., Cantab.
OWING to the widespread destruction by the sea on our East
Coast in the late November gale,1 and a renewal of the
same even while I am writing (on March 26th), considerable
attention has been drawn to the condition of those parts, and to
the nature of the sea defences. As I have spent the last five
summers in a small yacht between Aldeburgh in Suffolk and
the mouth of the Thames, I have some acquaintance with that
very curious seaboard ; and a short account of the position of
affairs there may be of interest to Essex naturalists.
A large proportion of the coast is marsh land, reclaimed
from the sea at such an early epoch that little or nothing seems
to be known of how and when this was effected. There are
exceptions, however, in the case of Canvey Island off Southend,
which was enclosed by a Dutchman in the 17th century, and
also of some land between the Crouch and the Blackwater,
reclaimed by the Rev. Bate Dudley, Rector of Bradwell, about
1780, and also in the case of portions of the Islands at the
mouth of the Crouch, which were enclosed by the Earl of
Winchilsea at the beginning of this century. A chronological
account of the Essex Reclamations would make an interesting
study and shed considerable light on the history of the county,
and it is to be hoped that some future historian will be found to
take up this very much neglected subject.
The landlords who own all these low-lying marshes on the
coast now declare that it will no longer pay them to keep up
the sea-defences, and have called on the Government to do it in
their place ; but if it does not pay the owners to protect their
own property, it is quite certain the public will not see the force
of doing it for them. What the outcome of it all may be if the
great tides of this year are repeated it is difficult to foretell, but
that a good deal of land will revert into sea saltings such as these
marshes originally were is pretty certain. Indeed, much of it
has already so reverted.
To describe the encroachments of the sea in these parts, I
will begin at Aldeburgh in Suffolk and travel south.
I Cf. the Report on the High Tide of November 29th, 1897, in the preceding part of the
Essex Naturalist, pp. 277-283..—[Ed.]